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Consolidation of mission figures at high levelSeaHelp statistics 2017

In 2017, SeaHelp mission figures in Croatia could be consolidated at a high level: the yellow angels on the Adriatic were called out 653 times to provide support. Quite a positive aspect, though, were definitely the replacements within the service fleet, as the emergency services needed just 34 minutes on average to get to the operation site after receiving the emergency call at the SeaHelp operations centre. In the course of this they travelled 11,876 nautical miles and consumed exactly 38,953 litres of gasoline.

The majority of operations in Croatia, as already during the past years, consisted of the towing of non-maneuverable boats. For that purpose, the SeaHelp ribs had to move out 178 times. Considering the reasons for the operations, fuel problems rank first with 144 missions, mainly due to blocked fuel filters in diesel engines or too high water components resulting in consequential damages in gasoline engines. 82 skippers were forced to make an emergency call due to failures of the vulnerable electrical system on the ship, while general technical problems required the emergency services to move out 60 times in the past year. And a very special SeaHelp service is well appreciated: 91 members had delivered necessary spare parts directly via SeaHelp, which is generally much faster than via the normal ways in Croatia. The SAR statistics was not yet available at the time of printing.
SeaHelp Italy is showing a strong increase of operations carried out, compared with the previous year. 158 interventions in 2016 stand facing 218 interventions last year. Technical problems on board caused 70 missions including the issue of “fuel problems” into the statistics, as they have not yet been considered separately. Most probably owing to the special conditions of the area, we recognised a particularly high number of 33 light groundings. 21 times SeaHelp staff had to solve technical problems on board, though in 62 cases they preferred towing the boat in order to have the repairs done at the respective marina.

All over Europe we noticed an increasing number of mission situations. Summing up Germany, Spain, Italy, Slovenia and Croatia, operations add up to 1662 interventions in 2017 while in 2016 the number of assistance operations was recorded as 1612. For the first time, the statistics distinguished between sailing and motor yachts. In total, 1083 sailors received assistance by SeaHelp but only 579 motor yachts asked for help via the SeaHelp operations centre.